Left in Front

I checked in with “the Gus” for the first time in a while today, and noticed he changed his sidebar. Included in the new links was one to James Howard Kunstler’s site. Mr. K’s dabbled in multiple mediums for a long period quite impressively, novels,  paintings, plays and more. I have an immense respect for artists who consistently produce work as they age.

Perusing his writing archives I came across an interview with Jane Jacobs. The conversation is in two parts and took place in March, 2001 at her Toronto home. The most interesting thing I learned about was urban renewal, but I thought a couple of quotes about Americans were worth sharing, especially considering she left and became a Canadian citizen.

JJ: Yes, we were but we were—you know this was another thing that we found out when we got here. Americans don’t really think that other places are as real as America. We were leaving things behind. Well, we were coming to other things that were just as real and just as interesting and just as exciting. And people would ask me after we had decided to stay, “Well, when are you coming back?” “Well, we’re not. We are living here.” “Oh, but you can’t just—you’ve got to come back to real life.” And I would say, “It’s just as real.” This is very hard for Americans to understand and I think that may be the biggest difference between Americans and people elsewhere. Canadians know that there are places just as real as Canada. It’s a self-centeredness that’s a very strange thing.

Traveling abroad bouncing around may not quite be “reality”, but I feel my life living and working overseas is a real one.

The thoughts below are similar to a few pages in the beginning of the “Black Swan”, and I agree with Taleb and her fully. In general, this is the sentiment I’ve heard from most of the people I have met abroad, but Mrs. Jacobs words it far more eloquently.

JJ: There are still an awful lot of intelligent, clever constructive Americans and they are still doing clever constructive things. Is it more necessary to be able to design computers or is more necessary to be able to manufacture computers. I think that it is necessary to do both. I think it is fatal to specialize. And all kinds of things show us that and that the more diverse we are in what we can do the better. But I don’t think that you can dispose of the constructive and inventive things that America is doing—and say oh we aren’t doing anything anymore and we are living off of what the poor Chinese do. It is more complicated than that. There is the example of Detroit which you noticed yourself was once a very prosperous and diverse city. And look what happened when it just specialized on automobiles. Look at Manchester when it specialized in those dark satanic mills, when it specialized in textiles. It was supposed to be the city of the future.

JHK: We have an awful lot of places in America that don’t specialize in anything anymore and don’t produce anything in particular anymore.

JJ: Well that’s better than specializing.

JHK: I am thinking about the region where I live which is a kind of a mini rust-belt of upstate New York—one town after another where the economy has completely vanished. There is no more Utica, New York, really. There is no more Amsterdam, New York, or Glen’s Falls or Hudson Falls. They are gone. And I am wondering, is the rest of America going to be like that.

JJ: Never underestimate the power of a city to regenerate.

JHK: Well that’s fair enough.

JJ: And things everywhere are not as bad as you are picturing.

• “Toronto_1910_Atlas_General_Key.jpg” published by Chas. E. Goad from the Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN ID number 383731, public domain. Found on the WikiMedia Commons. I cropped the image to focus in on the map itself.